Mark Twain

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose application of the word. Consider the flea! - incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.

Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.

You can't keep a juvenile moral institution alive on two displays of its sash per year.

I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one.

Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.

The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad.

We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God.

It's an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.

Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.

The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be?--it is the same the angels breathe.

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours. When you make a decision to "be" a particular way, you can count on change and external circumstances to come along which will challenge that decision. Remain vigilant after declaring a major decision and manage yourself in relationship to the goal. Set up structures that support you staying on target.

Life was a fairy-tale, then, it is a tragedy now. When I was 43 and John Hay 41 he said life was a tragedy after 40, and I disputed it. Three years ago he asked me to testify again: I counted my graves, and there was nothing for me to say. I am old; I recognize it but I don't realize it. I wonder if a person ever really ceases to feel young - I mean, for a whole day at a time.

I would not rob you of your food or your clothes or your umbrella, but if I caught your German out I would take it. But I don't study any more,- I have given it up.

The main difference between a cat and a lie is that a cat only has nine lives.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of growths

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.